Mind over Matter
by clarinet one
Summary: There is never an easy way out. Especially when you're the child of an Avenger.


She doesn't know what overcomes her. But suddenly, her phone is on the floor in front of her. In pieces.

Which isn't a problem. Her father can build her a new one in a matter of minutes. And it's not like people actually talk to her, anyways.

Nonetheless, she sighs heavily and is careful when picking up the pieces of the trashed device. If broken glass is annoying, then shattered hardware is a bitch. The pieces go in the trashcan that sits to the right of her side table. There goes the third device this month.

Sure, she has anger management issues. Serious anger management issues. But she told her mother that she wouldn't see a psychologist until she got a suit. There goes that. So she finds ways to cope. Unfortunately, that happens to be destroying her cell phones. They're useless, and her mother has other ways to contact her if needed.

Eventually, she decided that hiding in her room isn't going to do her much good, so she heads for the flow below the one her room is on, which happens to be where the kitchen is. Or at least she thinks. Because when she ends up on the floor that she affectionately named, "the sex room," she turns on the balls of her feet and right back into the elevator. She promises to herself that one day, hopefully soon, she will remember what floor the kitchen is on.

Today is not the day.

"JARVIS," she calls from the elevator. "What floor is the kitchen on?"

"_63, Miss Stark_," the computer replies. "_Would you like me to take you there?_"

"Yeah, sure," she says, and is almost taken aback when the elevator jerks to life underneath her feet. She assumes that it's just one of the perks that comes with having the elevator run by the computerized butler rather than pushing the button herself. (Hey, he offered. She wasn't going to pass up on an opportunity to be lazy.) But one of the things that continues to run through her mind is: why was she ten floors off?

Her mind is instantly off the subject as soon as she reaches the kitchen-slash-living room floor. She tries to enter unnoticed, but the _ding _of the elevator is kind of a dead giveaway. Why bother anymore? Her mother knows how to read her footsteps at this point, even though she's so light on her feet.

"Hello, Chrissy," she says, not looking up from what she's doing. Chrissy makes a noise that's supposed to symbolize a "hello" before falling onto one of the sofas and whipping out her tablet. Just because her phone is destroyed doesn't mean she has to be completely cut off from technology. She is a Stark, after all.

"Where's your phone?" her mother asks. (How can she even see Chrissy from over there?) Chrissy's shoulders tense. Her mother knows that when her phone is out of service, either broken or dead, she's on her tablet. Chrissy prefers the phone to the tablet. More privacy, and it fits better in her hand.

"Um," is the only reply she can think of. Her mother stops what she's doing to glare at her daughter.

"Did you break it?" she asks calmly. (There's a first.)

"I might've accidentally gotten really angry and thrown it…"

"Christine Alexandria Stark!" A rather exasperated sigh follows her full name. "I knew we should have gotten you a psychologist."

"Ew, no." Chrissy makes a face of disgust. "A shrink would only make it worse."

Another sigh from her mother. "Will you at least try it?"

"Absolutely not."

Hesitation. "You can have a suit." Pause. "If your father agrees, of course."

Chrissy contemplates this compromise, weighing the options. It's not like she had to go every week, or even make a commitment. It just means one appointment. Just one. In exchange for a suit. There was nothing to lose.

"Okay."

Bad idea.

* * *

The next day, she's sitting in the shotgun seat of her mom's extremely expensive silver car, the one that she takes to work and never, ever lets Chrissy drive in. Since she's dressed in her work clothes, Chrissy can only guess that she's going to drop her daughter off at the Barton's after her appointment with the shrink. No surprise. Her mother didn't have enough time to drive back to the Tower and make her meeting, and the Barton lived halfway in between the shrink and Stark Industries.

As they drive through the streets of New York City, Chrissy subconsciously zips her leather jacket up a little higher. Not that it's cold or anything. She's just worried about getting looks, or people recognizing her.

Like there's any stopping that. She closes her eyes, turns her music up a little louder, and gets lost in her own thoughts.

When the car pulls to a stop, it's in a dark parking garage. Chrissy pauses her music and wraps the headphone cord around her device before shoving it in one of the pockets of her jacket. She steps out of the car, sunglasses on, and instantly regrets letting her mother drag her out into public.

People stare when she follows her mother down several flights of stairs to get to a reception office, and up the elevator they go. They stop at several floors along the way to the eleventh floor, where the shrink is, and with each new person, Chrissy crams herself further into the back corner. This is such a bad idea.

Finally, the elevator hits floor eleven, and Chrissy shoves herself through the crowd of people to escape the soon-to-come claustrophobia. Her mother follows in suit, sending kind apologies to the people that her daughter had forced herself through. She nudges Chrissy to apologize as well, but the teenager can barely open her mouth before the doors shut. (She's thankful for elevators and their senses to awkward situations.)

The office is not what she expected. It's dark and kind of depressing, and there are too many people in the room. Only a few look like people who should be there. The rest look like reporters, trying to get the latest news on why Chrissy Stark needs to see a shrink. Honestly, this makes her a bit uncomfortable. She's not as level-headed with new people as she would like to be, but she can be cheeky with the Barton family all the time and not worry a bit if she's going to regret the words that come out of her mouth. She guesses that the press just have a different atmosphere, because once the gossip is out there, it's out there. There's nothing anyone, not even her father, can do to stop it.

And that makes her so damn nervous.

She takes a seat in a corner, with her mother standing kind of off to the side. Of course, she's on her phone, probably arranging things for her super important meeting later with some big engineering company. Chrissy pats her pockets, looking for her device, before remembering: oh yeah. Her phone is _broken, _and her father hasn't been home to make her a new one. And she forgot her tablet.

Perfect.

Thankfully, it isn't long before she's called back. The instant she stands up, the reporters launch into questions, as if they had been waiting for this moment the whole time. Her mother continually says, "no comment," and guides Chrissy back further into the office. But even when the door closes behind them, she can still hear the constant questions being thrown at her.

"Does this have to do with your hospitalization a few months ago?"

"Is your father involved?"

"What is your view on bio-terrorism?"

The last one almost makes her smile. Good to know some things never change.

The last question she hears really sets her on edge.

"Is this about your brother?"

Chrissy freezes. Every joint in her body locks. She doesn't move. She can't move. The throng of questions behind her turns to background noise as memories resurface.

She blacks out.

* * *

The next morning, Chrissy wakes up to Tori Barton's red curls tickling her nose. "Good morning, sleepy head."

"Holy shit, Tori," she grumbles, poking her friend's face until she retreated. "Invasion of personal privacy, much?"

"Oh, you know you love it." Tori sits back on her her heels. "What are you doing today?"

Chrissy adjusts her pillow so it's parallel to the headboard before pushing herself up into a sitting position. "Sitting around. Moping. Did you not see the news?"

"I did." Tori shoots her a look of concern. "I'm so sorry, Chrissy. People will do horrible things just for a little piece of information that they don't need."

"Tell me about it," she grumbles. She swings her legs out from under the covers and hesitates as her bare feet touch the cool wood floors of her room, but stands on them anyways. Her back aches from her fall yesterday, and she's pretty sure that she did something to her shoulder. But she manages to grab a blue under-armor shirt and black sweatpants and make it into the bathroom alive. After poking her head out to tell Tori that she would only be about fifteen minutes, she closes the door and starts the hot water.

Chrissy reaches up and pulls the hair tie out of her brown locks, letting her waves fall over her shoulders and cascade down her back. She strips out of her pajamas, and leaving the water on high, steps under the stream. She adjusts the water pressure and just stands there. Why can't she stay this way forever?

Unfortunately, she has a guest, and has to get clean fast. _Sorry, hot water. Going to have to get a rain check on that stand-under-the-stream-forever date._

Exactly fifteen minutes later, Chrissy walks out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her hair. Tori is sprawled across her bed, reading one of her metaphysics books. Chrissy smirks at the sight of her friend picking up something science-related for once.

"How do you read these things?" Tori asks, sensing Chrissy's presence. "They're like textbooks."

"Because they _are _textbooks," Chrissy replies, taking the towel from her hair and throwing it at Tori, who catches it mid-flight without looking up from the book.

"Nice try," she mutters. "This is actually really interesting."

With a sigh, Chrissy walks over and plucks the book out of Tori's hands. "Come on. Are you going to make me do something or what?"

"We could watch TV?" she suggests, sitting up and bracing herself back on her hands. Chrissy makes a face.

"Yesterday and the news don't really mix," she grumbles. Tori nods understandably.

"Sparring?"

The idea of throwing punches at her best friend doesn't really appeal to her mood right now. Tori sees this and instantly amends the suggestion. "With Happy."

A smile spreads across Chrissy's face. "Perfect."

* * *

A half hour later, the girls are sliding combat gloves over their hands and compression socks on their ankles, just as a precaution. Tori's hair is French braided, and as soon as she gets her compression socks on, she slides off her gloves, shoves them into her waistband, and starts twisting Chrissy's into a ponytail.

"You know, I'm not always going to be here to do this," Tori teases, poking the back of Chrissy's neck with her free hand, sending a shiver down her spine.

"Yeah, but I'm too lazy to take my gloves off," she grumbles. Tori laughs and wraps the hair tie around the ponytail.

"Done." She pats the top of Chrissy's head and slips her gloves back on. Chrissy stands up and stretches her upper arm muscles. Her right shoulder aches, and she probably shouldn't be sparring, but she doesn't care. It'll help if she takes her anger out somewhere.

Fifteen minutes later, the girls are still waiting for Happy, and are doing things to pass the time. Chrissy decides to test out her shoulder using a punching bag, and Tori practices tight-rope walking on the cords surrounding the boxing ring. It's another five minutes before Chrissy's father comes in.

"Happy's busy," Tony says, Chrissy stops what she's doing to look at him.

"But he told us that he would spar with us," Chrissy says, her face beginning to slip into a pout.

"Sorry kiddo."

He leaves, and Christy shoots Tori a glance. "What now?"

Tori's lips twitch into a smile. "Time to call in the twins."

* * *

Matthew and Michael Barton are thirteen years old, five years younger than Tori, but only two years younger than Chrissy. The boys are the spitting image of their father: close-cut brown hair and the pale blue eyes. They, like Tori, are being taught to master hand-to-hand combat and weaponry, and while far from their sister's skill, they make good sparring partners.

Perfect.

A bracket is set up, kind of like a championship, to keep things even. Winner gets exemption from one of Natasha's self defense seminars. Seems fair enough.

The twins won't fight each other first, and neither will the best friends. Michael and Chrissy will spar, followed by Matthew and Tori. The rules are as follows: first to keep their opponent on the ground for fifteen seconds wins. Simple enough, right?

As soon as Tori rings the bell to begin the fight between Michael and Chrissy, the thirteen-year-old jabs Chrissy straight in the jaw. She clenches and unclenches it for a moment, and finds her anger at the press. She channels that anger into energy and adrenaline, and charges for Michael, who looks terrified.

Chrissy isn't even aware of what happens next, but suddenly, Michael is on the floor, and she's straddling him. She can vaguely hear Tori begin counting while Michael tries to buck her off. Not going to happen, she thinks to herself. Chrissy's ears start working again as she hears the number fifteen be called, and then Michael groan in frustration. He shoves Chrissy off of him and storms out of the gym. One point for Stark.

Tori and Matthew were up next. Chrissy rings the bell and just watches in amazement as the siblings move with fluidity and put purpose into their strikes. She can hear them taunt each other for a second before Tori receives a well-placed uppercut to her abdomen. This gives her quite a shock, which gives Matthew enough time to bring her to the floor. Chrissy starts counting, but only gets to four before Tori switches their positions and is on top of her brother, his cheek pressed into the floor of the ring. Chrissy gets all the way to fifteen, and starts to feel a sense of dread. She'll be sparring Tori.

This is exactly what she was trying to avoid.

Tori takes a break to catch her breath and get some water, but as soon as Matthew finds Michael, the match begins.

They start out simply circling each other. Tori's glove begins to peel off, and, too impatient to fix them, takes off both of her gloves and tosses them aside. Chrissy does the same, and no one makes the first move until Chrissy trips over her own feet. Classic. Tori takes this opportunity to hit her directly in her right shoulder, sending pain flaring all up her right side. But she manages to find her anger at the press again, and once this is converted to energy, she sees a brief flash of fear in Tori's eyes. Brief being the key word.

Chrissy throws a combo, and then Tori throws one back. They block each other's hits so well that their bruises are mostly going to be from the blocking, which is a good thing. But when Chrissy slips up and Tori nails her straight in her solar plexus, she stumbles back into the ropes. Tori takes this opportunity and aims a punch at Chrissy's rib cage. But she doesn't account for Chrissy knees giving out slightly, therefore lowering the herself, and the punch lands in the one place that it shouldn't.

The room is dead silent as soon as the sound of shattering glass fills the air. Tori retracts her arm, only to find her fist cut up and bloody. Chrissy looks down at her chest, and watches as the light that is muffled by her skin-tight shirt flickers several times before going completely dark.

Well, this is bad.


End file.
